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Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

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Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#281
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Buying a new Air doesn't make sense since it's outdated a bit and doesn't fit most of what I want. Um, this is what _you_ said -- "Currently, only Air fits the bill, but it's getting old." Sorry, I still have no idea why are you're looking for a MB air replacement instead of upgrading to a newer model.

'Newer model' was last updated year and a half ago.

Ah okay, that makes sense now! You're on a much shorter upgrade cycle than what I imagined.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, please feel free to take them to task over that. But while you are doing so, please avoid misrepresentations as egregious as Motorola announcing that they will stop updating their phones with the new security updates. (and less egregious ones too).

It might be more charitable to assume their intent wasn't to mischaracterize.

That's why I used the word mischaracterize. It doesn't really examine intent, it points at the result.

For instance, you can mischaracterize something by not understanding it or by not being informed at all about it or by intentionally lying.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#283
I was hoping Xiaomi would also launch a version with Ubuntu as the default OS. An i5, 8GB DDR4 Ram, 256GB SSD, backlit keyboard and 10 hours battery backup at $750 sounds like a sweet deal.

I know Ubuntu can still be installed on the Windows version, but I expect it to be a hacky path with installation issues, getting the hardware to play nice and the backlit keyboard to work, and finally maybe even battery life issues.

An out of the box solution like the XPS 13 at a lower price point might work.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#284

I've been looking for a new laptop recently, but I can't seem to find a good. My primary concerns are: - not to have open it up and clean from dust. That's what all of my laptops, except Air, suffered from. They get dust inside and then get hot and loud. I move around a lot and it's inevitable. I don't want noise and I want as little heat as possible. - Multitouch Trackpad like on Macbook Air. It's wonderful! - Long…

I would seriously recommend the Dell Xps 13. It is the size of a 12 inch laptop because of zero bezels. Comes with easily replaceable nvme ssd (soldered 16 GB RAM though) and the integrated Intel 540 graphics helps me play Dota, Bioshock,etc easily...

Superb Linux compatibility...and can be charged using the Dell companion battery pack !!

And if I might add - excellent swag appeal.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#285
post #162
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite reliable with Optimus? I'd bet your experience is based on desktop GPUs, but Optimus is painful with Linux.

Extremely so. My current (and only) working solution is to disable the Nvidia GPU on a host and use it PCIe passthrough to assign it to another Linux or Windows VM. That's the only stable solution that doesn't break the world when enabling/disabling the discrete GPU. We shouldn't have to revert to such extreme measures...

At the moment my only two issues with Optimus are that they crash X on wakeup if loaded, and that DPMS doesn't seem to disable properly after the screensaver ends. For the earlier you can add an a suspend hook to unload the nvidia modules, and for the latter you just need to switch to a tty and back to get the screen working again.

Both are somewhat annoying, but far less than only being able to use it in a VM. That said, I'm curious about how you manage the VM output, considering that PCIe passthrough requires a dedicated screen.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#286
This quote from Jony Ive really made me feel for the guy:

“When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it’s copied. I have to be honest, the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn’t. I think it’s theft, and it’s lazy.”

Xiaomi have done this to others. Their new air filter for example basically clones a Japanese design and sells it for a fraction of the price: http://www.gizmochina.com/2014/12/09/xiaomis-air-purifierbor...

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#288
post #230
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of development would we be talking about? I still use my 2009 MBP for day to day development. It's ~10% slower than a Core M3, I usually do webdev on it, but it's also fine for AOT things like Rust, Haskell and even some C here and there (I recently compiled RethinkDB, no biggy). Things that really hurt are short battery life which is ~1.45hrs, and that it misses the modern CPU extensions which will obsolet…

I'm surprised you find Rust and Haskell bearable. Because for both languages slow compilation is a pretty well known problem[1][2]. On my old laptop (2011 MBP) compiling and interpreting (ghci/ghcid) took so long that it was distracting. This isn't even a big project; just a medium-sized one with a little over a hundred Haskell modules. [1]: https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_b... [2]: https:/…

There's a PR open for supporting the beginnings of incremental recompilation in Rust, so hopefully it lands soon!

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#289

This quote from Jony Ive really made me feel for the guy: “When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it’s copied. I have to be honest, the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn’t. I think it’s theft, and it’s lazy.” Xiaomi have done this to others. Their new ai…

I don't know if he actually said that but isn't all innovation incremental? I understand he put his heart and soul into it, but there has been tons of people who have worked equally hard before him to get to where he got (Apple itself copied it's UI from Xerox). Apple has also blatantly copied and consumed many companies in the past.

There is so much code copied around these days. This is all just the way it is and how we have decided to move ahead as a society. Making judgments on others is uncalled for.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know with a Xiaomi is on an ancient version of Android and their phones are largely considered disposable. They might do the monthly security updates (all Android OEMs should be doing this) but that's very different than keeping up proper OS updates. Considering how cheap the Nexus line is, I'm not sure why people even both with the super-budget phones. You get a lackluster experience, few if any OS update…

My Xiaomi MI3 (international version) is almost two years old and now got automatically upgraded to Android 6.0. (No doze support and it revoked my root access but still nice!).

No doze? Any idea why? Seems like an odd thing to be missing (and an awesome feature to boot)
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